More and more work in organizations is being conducted through teams or groups. It is common to conduct group meetings wherein a host computer operating application software is used to deliver and display meeting content so that everyone in that meeting can conveniently view the content. The visual images created by the applications provide meeting participants with the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues more effectively. The difficulty, however, is that in these meetings, it is not easy to convey and disseminate information effectively, especially when multiple applications are utilized in the meeting such as presentation software and Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. Even with such powerful software, meeting participants are left to their own techniques to capture meeting notes and information, typically through their own note taking. In addition, the host typically will have the same issue and be forced to keep track of the meeting progress through his or her own note taking, often generated after the meeting. The result is that meeting participants are often not on the same page with regard to events at the meeting.
Furthermore, individuals in a group meeting are not typically able to directly control the host computer or annotate and edit the display content. The result is that only one participant at a time, usually the meeting's host, owns the means to control, via a keyboard or other input device, the flow of information from participants to the host computer where the information is displayed and saved and then later distributed. All other participants are dependent on the host to acknowledge, properly interpret, accept and then accurately input their ideas into the host computer for others to view.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a collaborative input system which enables every participant to personally control and provide input to the host computer through the use of multiple wireless pen-based devices and which captures the currently displayed image, no matter what application generated the image, thereby permitting a user to annotate directly over the image and thus capture specific notes associated with that image.